Tuesday, April 5, 2011

The other day, as is my habit , I picked up one of my old books and skimmed through it. That is one of my ways of travelling down memory lane. In this case thirty years back in time when I had first read Carl Jung’s “ Memories, Dreams, Reflections “. May be, he was always in my mind, my subconscious. For what was it that prompted me to pick up this particular book at a time when I had sat down to chronicle my life story.

Replying to a request to set down the memories of his youth, Jung wrote: “when we are old, we are drawn back, both from within and from without, to memories of youth. Once before, some thirty years ago, my pupils asked me for an account of how I arrived at my conceptions of the unconscious. I fulfilled this request by giving a seminar. During the last years the suggestion has come to me from various quarters that I should do something akin to an autobiography. I have been unable to conceive of my doing anything of the sort. I know too many autobiographies, with their self deceptions and downright lies, and I know too much about the impossibility of self portrayal, to venture on any such attempt.”

I have written earlier that “I have always thought that its easiest to write one’s own story, but now I have found that it is hard to expose what you have hidden so long. Also it is tough when you have nothing spectacular that has happened in your life. You have had an ordinary life.” I guess that is where self deception and downright lies come in.